🖥 The VA Basement That Changed My Life
How I Went from Envelope-Stuffing to a Website for Veterans
When I got out of the Palo Alto Day Hospital in 1991, I wasn’t ready for the world—and the world sure as hell wasn’t ready for me. I’d spent about a year going to therapy five days a week, trying to keep the ground from collapsing underneath me. It helped, don’t get me wrong. But there’s a long stretch between not being actively suicidal and actually living.
So I was placed in the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy Program.
That’s a fancy name for a not-so-fancy reality.
They put me in the basement with a stack of envelopes to stuff. I stayed because I needed money to eat—I got a nickel for each one. I stayed because I needed a purpose—and because, for the first time in a long time, no one expected me to be okay.
Let me tell you, nothing grounds you quite like folding paper for hours under fluorescent lights, trying not to think about how this became your life. I was an E-6. I’d written award citations. Managed people. Won medals. And now?
I was making a nickel an envelope stuffing marketing material for a Silicon Valley information technology company—one that I had no hope of ever working for.
But something happened down there.
The Quiet Basement Was a Kind of Healing
Nobody expected me to perform. I didn’t have to smile. I didn’t have to explain the scars behind my eyes. And the truth is, the routine started to help. I showed up. I stuffed. I breathed.
Eventually, they noticed I had computer skills. Basic stuff at first—data entry, filing, keeping spreadsheets clean. Then one day, someone asked if I could build a tracking system for inventory.
I said yes. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could. But the task lit up a part of me that had been dormant since the Navy. The problem-solving part. The “I can fix this” part. The mission-driven part.
That new inventory system—along with a few other process changes I made—got noticed. And not just by the VA.
It caught the attention of that same Silicon Valley tech company I’d been stuffing envelopes for.
They arranged for me to start working part-time in their office during the week, serving as a direct liaison between their marketing department and the VA workshop. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was building a bridge—between the world that had forgotten me and the one I thought I’d lost.
After about a year, they offered me a full-time job as their Marketing Systems Analyst.
It was terrifying. And thrilling. And I said yes.
More money than I had ever made. A team that respected me. Work that I actually enjoyed. I felt like I’d won the lottery.
This was 1994, maybe ’95—and that’s when I was introduced to the web.
It wasn’t long before I started teaching myself HTML. I was fascinated. The web felt like possibility.
And somewhere in that spark, the old mission came roaring back.
A Website for Veterans—Because the System Wasn’t Enough
One day in 1993, after a long day of waiting on VA appointments in the heat, the last thing I had to do was pick up my meds. I turned in the slip and waited—45 minutes later, they closed. No meds for me.
I went home to my tiny studio apartment, vibrating with rage. I stood there, fists clenched, and yelled up at the sky:
“You will rue the day you fucked with me, VA.”
From that day forward, I started gathering everything I could about VA claims. Regulations, case law, paperwork samples—anything. I didn’t know exactly how I’d share it yet. I just knew I would. Because the next veteran shouldn’t have to go through what I did.
So in my spare time, I started building something.
It began with a handful of pages: basic claim info, a few links, some step-by-step guides I wrote myself. I called it HadIt.com—as in, “I’ve had it”—because I really had. Had it with the runaround. Had it with the silence. Had it with watching other veterans fall through the cracks just like I had.
I didn’t have a grand plan. No team. No funding. Just a mission—and enough web skills to keep tinkering.
By early 1996, the site was live, and in 1997 it was registered as HadIt.com.
That Basement Was the Bridge
We don’t talk enough about the in-between places. The basements. The not-quite-broken but not-yet-whole seasons of life where you’re just surviving.
But that basement gave me back something I didn’t know I’d lost: agency.
It didn’t cure me. It didn’t erase the trauma. But it gave me a path. And sometimes, that’s everything.
Because of that basement, I built a tracking system. That system led to a job. That job introduced me to the web. And the web gave me the tools to build HadIt.com—a place that’s helped thousands of veterans over the years.
Not bad for a nickel an envelope.
🔔 Before you go:
Have you had a “VA basement” moment? A time when life forced you to slow down—and change direction?
Share it in the comments, or send me a note. I read every one.